


Four Tempos

by ToSerWithLove



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-14 05:27:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20595455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToSerWithLove/pseuds/ToSerWithLove
Summary: He glanced down at me from the corner of his eyes and laughed sharply. “Well, I saw no point in arriving at the restaurant well before you. I received a letter this afternoon about a case that might hold some potential.” He described it as we walked along, and then, without missing a beat, he casually slipped his arm through mine, offering an easy assurance that he would match my pace.





	1. Spring: Andante

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He glanced down at me from the corner of his eyes and laughed sharply. “Well, I saw no point in arriving at the restaurant well before you. I received a letter this afternoon about a case that might hold some potential.” He described it as we walked along, and then, without missing a beat, he casually slipped his arm through mine, offering an easy assurance that he would match my pace.

_J. Watson_

As near as I could tell, the man had not moved all day. It was last afternoon, and Sherlock Holmes was sprawled in the same chair he had been in when I’d come down to breakfast. Though I had quit the room several times, there was little evidence that he done more than shift positions in my absence. There was a stack of papers on the table beside him, which he occasionally sifted through, clipping out an article here or there that seemed of some interest to him and dropping them into a disorderly pile at his feet. Mrs Hudson had come in with tea and the post and sighed rather pointedly at him, but he seemed to take no notice. I shrugged my shoulders by way of apology and gave her look of commiseration.

I rose and walked to the window, considering whether or not I should take a walk in an effort to limber up the leg that had grown stiff with the arrival of spring rains. Suddenly Holmes sprang to his feet, looked about the room like a man started awake, and rubbed his hands together. “What do you say to dinner at Simpson’s?” It was the first time he had spoken to me all day. “After all, you are right; it would do you good to stretch your leg.”

“How did you—”

“Oh come, Watson. You’ve been limping about all week and just now you crossed to the window in order to ascertain whether or not it was still raining. It isn’t, and we both could stand to get out of this room.” He bent and scooped up his collection of clippings then walked to his room, presumably to dress for dinner, one tie of his gown trailing after him. “Be ready at seven,” he called back over his shoulder. He did not seem to notice that I had not agreed to join him. But perhaps he simply knew, the way he knew when I had met former military acquaintances at the club or when my old wounds ached or when I wanted oysters with dinner. The ease with which he seemed to see through me was both thrilling and terrifying.

I was ready at seven, just as he has requested. He looked at me in his usual way, a sort of sweeping gaze that did not linger obviously, but no doubt saw everything. I brushed self-consciously at my moustache. Whether it was that gesture or some personal thought that caused him first to smile then frown, I could not have said.

Once we were out the door, he took off down the street with a briskness that belied his earlier lethargy, and in a short time he had pulled several paces ahead of me. His long legs and my uneven gait worked against me. I started to call out to him, but thought better of it. I preferred not to draw attention to my lagging pace. Soon Holmes stopped, pausing at a pawnbroker’s window. He appeared to be looking closely at something on display, but I had seen him turn to say something to me earlier, assuming I would be at his side, so I knew that he must be trying to wait up for me in the least obvious manner possible. I felt a familiar flush of annoyance at my short-comings, but then it occurred to me that the man who so eagerly and thoughtlessly pointed out the deficiencies he saw in people around him was making an effort to spare my pride.

He turned just as I approached him. “I thought perhaps I had spied a necklace that a potential client had written to me about earlier this week, but I believe hers included an emerald in the setting.”

I smiled at him. “That’s odd. You usually don’t often pay heed to claims of missing jewelry.”

He glanced down at me from the corner of his eyes and laughed sharply. “I saw no point in arriving at the restaurant well before you. I received a letter this afternoon about a case that might hold some potential.” He described it as we walked along, and then, without missing a beat, he casually slipped his arm through mine, offering an easy assurance that he would match my pace.

At the table he ordered oysters and picked a wine that surprised me in its fineness. Clearly the impending case held the promise of being a lucrative one. I will admit that his bouts of good fortune caused me concern in those early days, when I worried that he might decide he did not need a fellow lodger after all. It would take several years and a series of signs even I eventually could not miss before I fully realized and believed I was indispensable to him for reasons that had nothing at all to do with my half of the rent.

When we left the restaurant that night, we were both in fine spirits. There were spots of colour high on his pale cheeks, and a warmth spread through my own when I noticed the rakish look this gave him. I was grateful for the cool night air and the excuse of the wine. We were walking along when he suddenly groaned and gestured to a figure approaching in the distance.

“The fellow coming down the walk is Mr. Edmundson, a man who is determined I should help him locate a certain urchin who allegedly stole his wife’s purse, and a man whom I am equally determined to avoid.”

About this time we passed a narrow alley, and without a second thought I dragged him into it and out of sight. I had thought we might cut through to the next street over, but the walkway was narrower and darker than it had seemed from the street. The flicker of the streetlamp scarcely reached beyond the entrance, and it was impossible to tell where it lead, or even if it went through. I took a few tentative steps into the darkness and then looked back at my companion, who was smiling in a mocking way at the edge of the light.

He walked up to me, his movement somehow even more fluid than usual, though perhaps it merely seemed that way because of the wine and the shadows. He gripped my shoulder then lowered his head to mine, as though trying to see at my eye level, and gazed down the alley with a wry grin playing at one corner of his mouth. “Where are you leading us, Watson?”

I laughed and shrugged, keenly aware of the weight of his hand. “Away from Mr. Edmundson.”

He squeezed my shoulder before taking my hand and pulling me back toward the street. “Careful, now,” he whispered. He paused at the entrance and listened. Then he flattened against the wall, tugging me into place beside him. When Mr. Edmundson had passed, he stepped casually back into the street. He let go of my hand as he did so, but when I joined him at his side, he hooked his arm firmly through mine once more.

Our footsteps fell into rhythm, as improbably and as easily as our lives had. I shivered at the thought, at the way it seemed to lodge somewhere in my brain next to the image of his flushed cheeks and the memory of his long fingers tangled with my own. “There aren’t many cold nights left,” he said as he stepped a little nearer. I nodded, and we walked in companionable silence back to our home on Baker Street, our heels clicking together along the wet pavement and my arm pressed warmly against his side. 


	2. Summer: Larghissimo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He kissed them one by one then touched the tip of my index finger with his own. “Phalanges.” He dragged his finger down the length of mine and across my palm. “Metacarpals.”
> 
> “Are you giving me an anatomy lesson, Watson?”
> 
> He gave a smile to which I believe the term wicked would not be misapplied. “I hope to give you several.”

_S. Holmes_

I had stripped off the dockworker’s costume in which I’d passed the majority of the day, ran a damp rag over my torso, and slipped on a clean shirt of my own when Watson rapped lightly at the door to my room. “Come in,” I called as I buttoned the shirt. He stepped into the room, his eyes following my fingers and the thin triangle of flesh at my neck as it disappeared beneath the stiff fabric. He caught himself and looked back at the letters in his hands. “Mrs Hudson brought up the mail.”

I turned to open the window and then stretched out on top of the bed. A hot breeze wafted in, but it was preferable to the stifling air of the room. “Read them to me, if you would.” I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers to my temples.

There were three letters from potential clients but only one cheque. The few bills could be put off for at least a week. When I opened my eyes, he had moved to the window and was staring at me from his perch on the sill. I knew from his expression that he was going to kiss me again. Part of me wanted to kiss him where he was, against the soft billow of the curtain in the halo of light that currently surrounded him, but there were risks I knew we could not take. I swung my feet over the side of the bed. We had kissed four times since that late July evening a fortnight ago: o_n the settee, beside my desk, pressed against the door, on the ninth step of the stairway up to our rooms._ The last had been the most daring so far and had occurred only the day before as he was coming in from a walk and I was heading out. We were edging past each other, and I was on the step below him when he suddenly cupped my face and turned my face to press a quick, dry kiss to my lips. I tossed the mail in the general direction of the bedside table and took him by the hand to pull him out of sight of the street.

We lay across the bed, our lips meeting and parting lazily and our hands grazing each other’s arms and brushing hips. Perhaps it was the heat of the day in addition to his body pressed against mine that caused me to feel as though all my nerves were suddenly connected and all my senses crossed. When his hand drifted down my leg and turned to explore the inside of my thigh, I pulled away in a manner that I fear can only be described as abrupt. The air seemed to have gone out of the room.

He sat back and gave me a hard look that implied he had not yet decided whether I had wounded his pride, then he put his hand on my shoulder in a way that seemed far more brotherly than his most recent touches. “Are you sure you want this?” _Are you sure you want me_, he may as well have asked, for that was the question in his clear, blue eyes.

I covered his hand with mine. “Yes. It’s only…” I trailed off. I have my own pride, after all, and it was not an easy thing to admit to John H. Watson that here, at least, we had found an area in which his own expertise vastly outshone my own.

He squeezed my hand, and I watched realization dawn on his face. Watson is a fair shade brighter than he makes out in his little stories, but he has always had a rather higher opinion of modesty than I do.

“Have you done this before?” he asked gently.

I shrugged. “I’ve…dabbled.”

“Dabbled?”

I could have expounded on the topic and told him of my schoolboy fumblings or my few ill-fated, frantic with men who elicited the proper physical response, but who left my mind distant and wandering in a way that made the whole affair feel largely dissatisfying. I could have told him all this, but I did not. Instead I silently reached across him for the silver case on the bedside table and withdrew a neatly rolled cigarette. I held it delicately poised between my fingers as I lit it with a practised casual air. Watson loves my hands after all, or so I have gathered from his warmly written descriptions of them. He settled next to me on the bed, propped up on his arm, and took my unoccupied hand in his. His thumb skimmed casually over the calluses on my fingertips. “From the violin?”

I nodded. He kissed them one by one then touched the tip of my index finger with his own. “Phalanges.” He dragged his finger down the length of mine and across my palm. “Metacarpals.”

“Are you giving me an anatomy lesson, Watson?”

He gave a smile to which I believe the term _wicked_ would not be misapplied. “I hope to give you several.”

If I said no colour rose to my cheeks, I would be a liar, for if his double entendre had not been enough to warm my face, he also chose at that moment he to slip his finger beneath the loose cuff of my shirt. It was a small motion, but it was the first time we had touched at all beneath our clothes. A second finger joined his first. He dragged them out slowly, brushing over my veins as he pressed the place where my hand and wrist met. Surely he felt the quickening of my pulse beneath his fingertips. “Carpels.”

I took a drag on my cigarette and exhaled a little unsteadily, sending a stream of smoke into the still, muggy air. Staring at me, he pushed up my sleeve. “Radius,” he said as he stroked down one side of my forearm and then up the opposite side. “Ulna.” He stroked my upper arm over the fabric of my shirt. “Humerus.”

He reached across for the cigarette and took a long drag himself before turning to extinguish it in the tray on the table. He returned to kiss me slowly on the lips, then the corner of my jaw. “Mandible,” he murmured against my skin. His lips moved to my neck as he leisurely worked my buttons and brushed my shirt open. He traced my newly bared collarbone and trailed down my chest. “Clavicle. Sternum.” I took a shaky breath as his hands settled over my sides. “Ribs, of course.”

There was a shuffle, interrupted by slow kisses, as he pulled off my shirt. When I was bare to the waist, he sat back between my legs, his hand running up my shin. “Tibia and fibula.”

I swallowed as he slid his hand behind my knee and dragged his thumb over my kneecap. “Patella.” He ran his hand slowly up my thigh. “Femur.” I exhaled heavily. He drew a finger against the skin just above the waist of my trousers then he stretched out beside me again and pulled me into his arms. “Scapula. Vertebrae,” he whispered at my mouth as he stroked my back. I shivered as his fingers dipped lower. He rolled us over so that he was on top, and when his hand moved to my flies, I could only bite my lip and let him do what he would.

I lifted my hips obligingly as he tugged at my trousers and undergarments, removing them and draping them over the footboard. He took my bare hips in both his hands, his thumbs pressed against the bones that stood out on my spare frame. “Pelvis.” He dipped his head, and his mouth pressed to the hollow of my hip, sending my hips arcing involuntarily up.

He looked up, glancing at the considerable evidence of my enjoyment of his ministrations, then turned back to me, his face flushed and a gleam in his eyes. “Shall we continue to, what did you call it, Holmes? Dabble?” He laughed, and before I could respond he took me in his mouth.

I knew Watson was a dutiful soldier, a fine doctor, a serviceable writer, and an indispensable companion; but there were skills he possessed I could never have imagined. Soon I writhed and panted beneath him. Whatever I had known before, it was not this—this sense of coming undone, of being laid bare in every sense. “John,” I cried out, and I pushed at his shoulder. He pulled back and finished me with two deft strokes of his broad hand. “John,” I whispered as he pressed a kiss again to my hip. He moved up to lay beside me and pulled me into his arms.

I am not an easy man, I know. But as I lay naked in the arms of the man who had named and claimed the very bones of my body, it occurred to me for the first time that perhaps he did more than merely admire my genius and tolerate my peccadillos and find my spare frame desirable. Perhaps he somehow, miraculously, felt something more for me, something I could not name, or perhaps simply did not dare to. I cupped his face in my hand and kissed his talented mouth once again. Late afternoon had slipped into early evening, and in the light of the setting sun the entire room seemed as warm and golden as the man beside me.

**Author's Note:**

> I was recently cleaning up some old files on my computer and ran across this collection of short fics I wrote *several* years ago. I think I posted the first one back in my old LiveJournal days then got busy and never posted any of the others, so I decided to dust them off, polish them up a bit, and put them here.


End file.
